Nicholas Hall

In a special lecture preceding this year’s first International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) World Congress in Philadelphia, Martin Seligman laid out his vision of a new field called positive education. He also stated that positive psychology is not about being pushed by the past and is about being pulled by the future, an even more intriguing idea in my view.

Positive Education

What is positive education and how is it different from current education? As you can imagine, positive education is about teaching well-being practices within a classroom setting. Seligman declares that these practices not only can be taught, but also augment the teaching of other subjects. This has been replicated 17 times around the world to significant positive effect. (No pun intended!)

Seligman addressed two major questions regarding the new field.

Should we do it?

His answer is yes. He gave three main reasons for why this is so important right now.

First, depression is so widespread – an epidemic in fact.

Second, happiness (positive emotion) in almost every nation is essentially flat. With the improvement overall of technology and economics, there is something drastically missing in our societies.

Third, positive education is synergistic with current education. Studies show that children learn better when they are experiencing positive emotions, when they are engaged, and when they have good social relationships.

Can we do it?

Dandelion ready to blow

Can well-being be taught? It turns out that well-being is not trait-like in people. It is quite teachable.

In the last few years, documented studies have shown about 12 interventions (so far) that can positively affect the well-being of people. The Penn Resiliency Project (PRP) is one large highly studied and validated application of interventions to increase well-being. Seligman is convinced that each pathway to well-being — positive emotions, engagement, meaning, and positive relationships — is measurable and teachable. Therefore we can bring positive psychology into the classroom.

“Human Beings Can Be Pulled by the Future”

Seligman then took a turn in his lecture and addressed his new perspective on positive psychology, that we can be pulled by the future rather pushed by the past.

Psychoanalysis posited that people were prisoners of their pasts. Yet only about 5% of the variance in who becomes depressed is explained by past conditions.

In a Geodesic Dome

An alternative view is that we form our reality from our expectations of the future. We can learn to do this in ways that help us become our best selves and create our best society.

To highlight his view, he references Roy Baumeister’s “brilliant” perspective on consciousness itself. “According to Baumeister,” says Seligman, “the function of consciousness is to simulate the future, and then choose among the simulations.”

“The positive states in life are guideposts to our best lives, to what we want. I think that’s very serious,” he says. “Positive psychology is about three things. It’s not about illness, it’s about flourishing. It’s not about the negatives, it’s about the positives. And it’s not about being repulsed by the past, it’s about being attracted to the future.”

I believe that Seligman’s view of positive psychology is one of true freedom – freedom from our unconscious and oftentimes negative past. We can consciously live as much as possible in a state of positive emotion, envisioning our best possible futures, and then freely and consciously choosing to move in the direction that creates our best lives and our best selves. In a way it is a giant, daunting view of our potential. Do we have it within us to live up to our own greatest potential? Martin Seligman seems to think we do.

“We need a science of being pulled by the future as opposed of being pushed by the past.” – Martin Seligman

Are you always the same person? In some situations, you may feel stressed but strong, moving forward knowing that an adversity is at least partly within your control. In other situations, you may feel like an adversity is so overwhelming that all you could do is lie down and give up.

Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.~ Viktor Frankl

Often we have no idea what creates our fear; it is just there. How can we change how we feel if we may not even know where it comes from? What can we do to uncover our fear and stress, and learn to better handle it or make it disappear altogether? In honor of this month’s optional theme of stress and resilience, here are some positive psychology tips on how to destroy our vampires and let our angels in.

Helplessness is a Vampire

Helplessness is a wildly destructive vampire. It pours acid on the fertile ground of our minds, sucking the blood out of our self-confidence and self-worth, crushing our self-esteem, and creating pessimism in all that we do. Helplessness has all kinds of negative consequences, including a lowered immune function, decreased satisfaction in life, and impaired relationships with others. (Doesn’t this even sound like the pale, sickly-looking, brooding, anti-social vampire in stories?)

Our greatest source of shelter from stress is our own mind. We’ve all seen it: the smiling cancer patient and the depressed college student. One has a short future to look forward to, the remainder of which will mostly be filled with pain. The other is in the prime of life, with an entire future to look forward to. Why are the responses of these people so out of whack with their stressors? One has angels, and the other is full of vampires.

Optimism is an Angel

Optimism is good for you. It’s also more fun.~ Martin E. P. Seligman

Angel

Optimism is an angel for no other reason except that it is on your side. There does not need to be any kind of religious component, unless you wish there to be. Optimism empowers us to have control over our lives because we have control of our minds. Through optimism and having control of your life, we tend to take the risks that we want to take in life to grow, rather than shrink in the face of adversity. We believe that we can do something, and this belief causes us to persist longer at our task, thereby leading to our success, writes positive psychology founder Martin Seligman in Learned Optimism.

You might not be used to thinking optimistically. Not a problem. Here’s where this article comes in. Optimism, especially for the habitual pessimist, is all about practice. It is about practicing throwing your negative beliefs out into the daylight of truth and letting them burn like the vampires they are in the bright sunlight of day. It is about practicing replacing those vampires with the angles of optimistic beliefs that carry you on their wings to a happier, more fulfilled, more successful life.

A stands for ‘Adversity’
What is the event that caused you to feel a certain way? What was the activity that set your consequences in motion?

B stands for ‘Belief’
Your beliefs are how you explain the adversity to yourself. This is the heart of Seligman’s “explanatory style” of optimists and pessimists. “I can rule this” vs. “I am a failure.” “This is a new challenge” vs. “My childhood traumas are insurmountable.”

C stands for ‘Consequences’
The consequences are your feelings about yourself in this situation given your beliefs about it. Beliefs also lead to your behaviors, so sometimes you can see what your consequences are by looking at what you’re doing because of your beliefs.

Externalization: Throwing Vampires into the Light

Often, all we know is that we feel terrible in a situation without being aware of any “internal monologue.” Often, we read suggestions to “monitor your inner thoughts or your ‘self-talk’.” What if you don’t hear any? What if your vampires are hidden and you can only see the pale-white ghosts of their consequences?

The way to do this is to externalize your internal beliefs by creating some dialogue for yourself. In Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman talks about a technique called “externalization.” This technique really helps if you know how you’re feeling or reacting in a situation, but you have no awareness of a thought process. (Also see Dave Shearon’s article I know what I was feeling, but what was I thinking?)

Two Techniques for Externalization

Journaling. Keep a journal, diary, or small notebook with you to jot down thoughts when you have a few moments. When you notice yourself feeling or behaving in ways that are like vampires (i.e. negative feelings or behaviors), write them down.

Write them down the moment you have theses behaviors or feelings for best results. It may be helpful to have three columns on your paper: A, B, and C. When you recognize vampire behaviors, write them down under Consequences. Next, write down either the adversity or the belief that may have caused your consequence. Typically, we know what the adversity was, but we draw a blank at what our beliefs might be. This is how this exercise really helps – by breaking out the components. To identify a belief, an in-the-moment thought, go with what feels most right and honest. You have thrown your vampire out into the sunlight by naming these aspects of your thoughts and feelings.

Talking. Another way to externalize is by going through these steps with someone you know well and who you feel won’t judge you negatively, especially if it is someone that cares about you. Verbally externalize these vampires for yourself with someone: “I’m not getting up excited in the morning,” “I leave the room when X– walks in,” or “I haven’t exercised in five days.” They lose their power in the light of recognition, in the light of scrutiny.

Slaying Vampires, Creating Angels

If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.~ W.L. Bateman

There are four main ways to slay your vampire beliefs and create angel beliefs.

Evidence: The strongest way to crush a negative belief is by summarizing factual evidence as to why it’s incorrect. What is the evidence that this belief is false? “I am not like my parents in this adversity because I behave differently in these ways…” “I am not weak; I am usually able and strong because of these other situations where I have proven that to myself such as ….”

Alternatives: Almost all adversities have multiple causes. Give alternative reasons/causes for why the adversity happened in the first place. Focus on the cause that is less destructive or more under your control.

Implications: This is what you turn to when the facts aren’t on your side and your Beliefs may, in part, be correct. De-catastrophizing is the rule here. A good question here is: “So what? Is this really so awful? Are the implications of this really so bad? What is the evidence (above) that can weaken the implication of this belief?” Ask yourself how you can change yourself or your beliefs now and in the future in order to get new and different outcomes next time.

Usefulness: Ask yourself: “How useful is this belief to me?” The blood-sucking vampire beliefs we hold serve only to do one thing: keep us in a familiar place of helplessness, weakness, and powerlessness.

After each one of these four, ask: “Now, what are possible alternative consequences given these disputations? I.e., what else can I do? How else can I be acting in this moment?”

Go through these disputation methods for all of your useless beliefs until they shrivel up like a vampire in the sunlight. Write them down in your diary and journal about them. Dispute and argue against them until you are hoarse and they are dead, dead, dead.

Creating Angels

Create a new column that lists your new angel belief. During this exercise, you hopefully have come across some possible new beliefs that you can adopt and carry with yourself into the future. Specifically, write them down:

What are your new angel beliefs? What beliefs move you forward?

What are your new consequences because of these new angel beliefs?

Literally write these new angel beliefs in conspicuous places for you to be reminded of them: on your bathroom or bedroom mirror, taped onto your computer, on your dashboard, put into a tape recording and listen to it the same time every day or whenever you feel you need it, make it your computer’s wallpaper or your put it on your cell phone. Tell your friends about your new belief, so long as they are open and supportive of your new belief. Be creative. Have fun painting your new beliefs throughout your life.

It might sound unlikely that an Australian-raised, self-proclaimed 60’s feminist-turned-Buddhist-nun would be the energy behind the San Francisco-based conference Happiness and Its Causes. The dynamic and energetic Ven. Robina Courtin was part of the force that created the same successful Happiness and Its Causes conferences in Sydney and London in 2007, and she wanted to bring it to her home base of San Francisco this time.

“Let’s deconstruct happiness, open it up, and look at the differences,” says Courtin. “Inspiring people is the main agenda of this conference.”

***

Happiness and Its Causes ConferenceNovember 24-25, 2008The Westin San Francisco, 50 Third Street, San Francisco, CA.PPND Readers get a 10% discount. Email us to get the discount details.Register HERE.

Expert speakers will infuse all the panels of the conference, including a talk on deconstructing happiness with Paul Ekman, health and happiness with Robert Saplosky of Stanford, a happiness in relationships panel with Thupten Jinpa, and Google promoting happiness in the workplace with Chade-Meng Tan, Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow.” Tough issues are also part of this conference such as dealing with depression and stress, happiness at the end of life, and teaching happiness in the classroom.

Scroll through the agenda of the conference to see noteworthy individuals in psychological science, Buddhist practice, psychological practice, medicine, sports, and the arts – from Buddhist nuns, to a seven-time senior national judo champion, to psychology experts. Click here to view all of the speakers.

Who is this conference for?

Just about anyone: psychologists, social workers, human resource managers, academics, medical professionals, coaches… anyone who wants to learn more about happiness and incorporate it into their own practices and lives. There are several different concentrations in the conference, so there’s something for everyone.

The concept behind the conference

The conference is to connect academics, researchers, and practitioners in and around the field of happiness, and look at happiness from many different aspects. Exploring all the ways that happiness has been approached, and clearing away the ideological debris to look at the fundamental aspects of happiness is what this conference will do.

As Buddhist nun for the past 30 years, Courtin believes that “happiness is about benefiting others” and that “everyone has the potential to change and develop themselves.” Bringing together Eastern and Western academics and practitioners on the multitude of approaches to happiness helps to disseminate the message of happiness and serves to benefit everyone involved.

Health practitioners will be happy to know that California State Continuing Education Units (CEU’s) are granted to all California MFTs, LCSWs and RNs for attending the conference.

This month I thought that I would visit a topic that is near and dear to my heart: peace. I have thought about peace in many ways and from many perspectives, from the eyes of an angry brother, an anxious student, a frustrated child, and as an adult making his way in the world. Coming from positive psychology, it makes me think of the virtues and character strengths model outlined by Peterson and Seligman (2004). Here, I’d like to condense an exercise I wrote for class, arguing for peace to be considered as one of the character strengths. This essay will roughly (though not completely) follow the criteria for a character strength outlined in the Peterson and Seligman book Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification.

What is Peace?

Peace is both an internal strength, as well as a strength expressed between individuals and groups. Peace is, in part, a state of non-conflict where desires or goals are in harmony with the values and motivations. It includes the ability to achieve this state through self-knowledge of values and goals, self-regulation to control the passions and desires, wisdom and perspective to see the similarities and differences between competing goals and to prioritize between them. It is the ability to see through the differences and focus on the similarities shared between the different groups of values and goals, as well as the ability to prioritize among values and goals and focus all energies into a peaceful union in pursuit of those goals. Peace allows all energy within the individual or group to be available to achieve its goals, without being sapped by conflict. Conflict is defined as the difference between the varying goals we have or values we treasure. Peace is not necessarily about NOT having competing goals, though it IS about not having conflict between them.

Do Human Beings Morally Value Peace?

Christianity, Buddhism, and Jainism are but a few religions hold peace as one of their central values. Peace is encouraged and cultivated within the members of these traditions. Inner peace is a valued goal for most practitioners of most of the major religions of the world. On a national and international level, most nations do not desire constant contention and war between the nations of the world. It is bad for economies, the environment, national resources, and for the welfare of their citizens. Peace also seems to be valued as the ultimate state to achieve by many nations the world over.

Is Peace Uplifting, or Does It Diminish Others?

Peace, when achieved either personally, between individuals, or between groups is generally elevating. Peace implies not simply a calm, non-violent state. Peace can also create a mutual sharing and helping between groups. Togetherness can even be a result in which the separation between both groups no longer exists and the groups now consider themselves one group. This usually benefits all participants. The employ of aggression diminishes others, not so the employ of peace. Likewise, the observation of peaceful acts tends to make people desire to follow suit in their own behavior. At the very least, the observation of peace makes observers feel good about the observation.

Is Peace Distinct From the Other Character Strengths?

Peace seems to include three other character strengths: social intelligence, forgiveness and mercy, and self-regulation. Social intelligence can help to create peace between groups, but it is not an indivisible part of peace, and certainly not required for personal, internal peace. Forgiveness and mercy could be considered necessary for peace, because often in order to make peace you have to forgive yourself or others of the past. This does not make forgiveness and mercy a part of peace, however, merely a helpful moderator for reconciling memory and past actions. Self-regulation could be seen as peace, but here is the rub: self-regulation is the power of the will to do things in spite of how you may feel. Peace on the other hand is that state of mind and emotion that is absent of conflict; will is not required because there is nothing in conflict. Peace is distinct and different from the other 24 character strengths.

Are There Paragons That Embody Peace?

Some paragons of peace include Thich Nhat Hanh, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and all of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desomnd Tutu, and Mother Theresa. Many of these individuals worked for and advocated peace between groups of people and exhibited the leadership strengths that brought about that peace.

Gandhi, Jesus, and the Buddha are three paragons that most people would agree are paragons of internal, individual character strength of peace. Many times, as in the cases of these three, peace comes about among groups by the personal influence of these individuals, many centuries later. This speaks to the degree of this strength within these paragons.

Imagine an Individual or a World Without Peace

Imagine a person without a modicum of peace. They would be quarrelsome, violent, angry, possibly depressed, and certainly troubled. They would have difficulty making decisions, for their inner values and goals would be in constant conflict. Those groups or nations that suffer from a lack of peace would have no respect for the rights of others, and would be doing things that are in contradiction with its values. Also, selective absence of peace between nations results in trade embargoes and at its extreme, war. What a terrible world in which to live!

Conclusion

Peace has been completely overlooked by the literature as a character strength and it is puzzling as to why. It is obviously fulfilling, otherwise so many millions of people would not meditate or pray or go to church or spend billions on the self-help industry to find calm and peace within themselves. A complete absence of peace would be a travesty indeed for any individual or nation. The only outcome of peace is greater well-being and life satisfaction, both for the individual and for groups.

I think that peace is an ultimate virtue, perhaps separate from all the others; a virtue or sate of being that comes about when we have true inner harmony among our goals, beliefs, and values.

“The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Sponsel, L. E. (1996). The Natural History of Peace: A Positive View of Human Nature and Its Potential. In T. Gregor (Ed.) A Natural History of Peace (pp. 95-125). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Peace is a Character Strength was last modified: July 25th, 2015 by Nicholas Hall

Positive psychology and EI (“emotional intelligence”) have differing domains of research, though luckily I believe they can contribute to one another. For reference, here are the four branches of EI referenced in my earlier article on emotional intelligence.

Perceiving emotion is the ability to…

Identify emotion in a person’s physical and psychological states

Identify emotion in other people

Express emotions accurately and to express needs related to them

Discriminate between accurate/honest and inaccurate/dishonest feelings

Given these branches of EI, practitioners of positive psychology would be well-advised to use the EI model when working with coaching or therapy clients, business groups, or students. Surely being able to perceive what emotions you, your client, or the group you are working with are experiencing is fundamental. Being able to understand the differences between positive and negative emotions, and even between different positive emotions, helps the conversation you can have with your clients. Keeping the EI branches in mind and actively using them in your practice I believe will enhance the emotional education taking place, which in turn affects performance.

This is a perfect model for interventions. Those of us in positive psychology like to call interventions that increase or enhance positive emotions or strengths of character “positive interventions.” We sometimes classify interventions according to their ability to ameliorate the negative or accentuate the positive. I propose a different, or perhaps simply an “added” view: that interventions are targeted to a specific branch of emotional intelligence AS WELL AS to a specific positive emotion or character strength.

Are not most interventions intended as educational vehicles and not merely an unconscious “shot in the arm?” Then why not target them so? Or, at least be knowledgeable about the branch in which your intervention resides. It may be that your intervention is ineffective not because it is fundamentally flawed, but because the individuals or groups you are using it with need to learn how to understand their emotions, while your intervention merely helps them perceive what their emotions are. Perhaps our interventions, and particularly our emotional interventions, would be more effective if we kept the EI model next to us when we devise them.

I also believe that positive psychology can contribute to the EI field. Actually, it already has. The last two bullet points under “Using emotions to facilitate thought” – capitalize on mood changes to appreciate multiple points of view and use emotional states to facilitate problem solving and creativity – have been described by Barbara Fredrickson of UNC-Chapel Hill. The “broaden” part of her “broaden and build” theory describes precisely those two aspects of that branch. Negative emotions can’t get you into states that allow you to “appreciate multiple points of view” or “facilitate problem solving and creativity.” Only positive states can do that. And Fredrickson has studied and described that.

P. Ekman, M. McGowan

Under “Managing emotions,” branch 4, “engaging and prolonging your emotional state” is the same as our “savoring” in positive psychology. Therefore, the interventions that rely on savoring are perhaps those that focus the participant on managing their emotions.

Under “Understanding emotions,” branch 3, “perceive the causes and consequences of emotions” is what hope theory (Lopez et al., 2004) and goal setting does. It educates the goal-setter that hope can be caused by having pathways and agency.

Other researchers not directly associated with positive psychology have, of course, contributed to the underlying definitions of EI. Paul Ekman (2003), for example, has eloquently and exhaustively researched facial expressions that can help educate us on the “identify emotion in other people” bullet point under “Perceiving emotions.”

In the end, using psychological interventions either with ourselves or with clients can help create the ability to “Manage emotions in oneself” or “…in others,” under branch 4. That is the most mature use of our emotional intelligence, and a state we all aim to achieve.

Future Directions

I invite you to comment on this article with your thoughts about how some concepts, theories, or interventions in positive psychology line up under the EI framework. Nothing is clean and perfect, to be sure, but the more I think about this, the more convinced I become about the EI framework and its utility within positive psychology. Do you think so too?

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